Cross-distribution support improvements coming for Canonical's Snap packages

Well, 2024 should be interesting for Linux packaging! While many distributions use different packaging formats like deb, rpm and others there's also Flatpak for cross-distro support. But we also have Canonical's Snap - which is going to get improved cross-distro support.

Writing on Mastodon, developer Zygmunt Krynicki mentioned "I will be returning as a snap developer later this month. My main focus will be cross-distribution support. Unlike in the past this will be my full time job. I'm very excited for what is ahead for snaps.". It's interesting to see Canonical paying developers to work on this (and it's a good thing too)!

Pictured - The Snap Store

Packaging is always a real sore spot for Linux, and it leads to a fair amount of confusion. Just like with how many Linux distributions there are there's upsides and downsides to it though of course. You don't get innovation and improvements by always sticking to one single thing, and the power of open source is people can often just work on whatever they want.

Still, it would be nice no matter what distribution of Linux you pick, if we can just tell people to "go here" to get whatever app it is they're after rather than having to do a support-dance to find out their specific distribution and version to see what's available to find out how they can grab something.